Page 19 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

Harper calls the BookFace Ladies over, and Sylvie starts the tour, giving us some background facts about the Colosseum. It quickly becomes apparent that Sylvie has a tenuous grasp of history.

I’m pretty sure, for example, that they did not film the Gladiator movie here, despite Russell Crowe’s tongue-in-cheek tweet about taking the family to the “old office” when he was visiting Rome. But this is the proof she offers that it happened. After she says that Spartacus fought in the Colosseum’s inaugural gladiatorial bout,34 I decide to tune her out.

I have a murder to plot, after all, an attempted murder to solve, and a stalker to avoid.

More than enough to keep me occupied.

Harper, on the other hand, is not so lucky.

“That’s not true,” she says ten minutes later after Sylvie says that there weren’t any women gladiators. Harper’s first degree was in literature with a minor in history. “There’s evidence that women did fight here.”

“Evidence?” Sylvie says.

“The frieze on the arena floor? The one that shows Amazon and Athena fighting?”

Sylvie’s forehead creases like she’s trying to remember. “Oh, yes. But that is just decoration. Roman men, they liked their strong women, no?”

Harper’s horrified, but Connor starts to laugh. “Harper always knows better, Sylvie. You’ll see.”

Harper shoots Connor a look that could, well, kill, but Connor simply winks it off, then takes the arm of the youngest fan. She’s pretty but probably forty, fifteen years above his usual age bracket.

This is the man who told me once that he was the “Leonardo DiCaprio of private detectives.”35, 36

Gross, right?

I should put that in the next novel. Then everyone will understand when he turns up dead.

“Now,” Sylvie says, “let us examine the friezes on the west portico.”

We follow Sylvie down a hall, and I try to go back to my plot, but I’ve lost it.

Not for the first time.

The tour winds on, up and down stairs, around corners, and through the crowds, and I’m tired and thirsty, and the sun is touching my skin like it wants to kiss it.

Please, God, let this be over soon.

Jesus. Rome is making me religious.

“And now, because you are an A-one special guest, I have gotten you a tour of the catacombs.” She points to the floor of the Colosseum, where the structure for a series of underground rooms still exists.

Sylvie leads us down a long set of stone steps until we get to a velvet rope that’s being manned by a burly older man with a fierce expression. “You may take as many pictures as you like. Please do not use flash.”

The BookFace Ladies twitter in excitement and I sigh internally. It was like this yesterday at the Vatican, where I found myself being pulled into a private tour of the Sistine Chapel while a massive line wound its way through the stone courtyard in the full sun. I don’t like getting things because of my celebrity; I can wait in line with everyone else. But I’ve learned over the years that you often aren’t given a choice.

It’s always made me wonder, though, about the celebrities who came before me.

Had they demanded these private audiences with art?

“El?” Harper says.

“Yeah?”

“You’re up in the clouds today.”

“You should be used to it by now.”

“We just need to do a quick tour around the Forum after this, and then you’re free.”